Aiiii, Robot

After more than 50 years onstage and on-screen, Sir Anthony Hopkins is finally tackling his first TV role for HBO. And what, pray tell, is the subject of his new show? Why it’s an updated version of Michael Crichton’s directorial debut film, Westworld, a cowboy-centric precursor to Jurassic Park. The titular Westworld is a futuristic theme park where instead of lab-created dinosaurs running amok, you have terrifying robotic cowboys, memorably played by Yul Brynner in the original 1973 film. Here he is in all his face-melting glory.

Alas, Hopkins will not be playing a demonic robot in a stetson. Instead he’s taking on the role of Dr. Robert Ford, “the brilliant, taciturn, and complicated creative director, chief programmer, and chairman of the board of Westworld.” In Jurassic Park parlance, he’ll be playing the John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) role. According to Deadline, Evan Rachel Wood will be joining the cast in the following role:

Wood plays the provincial, beautiful and kind Dolores Abernathy, the
quintessential farm girl of the frontier West — who is about to
discover that her entire idyllic existence is an elaborately
constructed lie.

To stretch the Jurassic Park comparison to the breaking point, Wood will essentially be playing a lovely young raptor who finds out she was made in a lab. James Marsden is also in talks to join Hopkins and Wood, but it’s not known whether he’ll be playing the Brynner’s “Gunslinger” character or the mustachioed human hero who throws that beaker of acid in order to save the day?

Though it’s been somewhat forgotten by time, the original Westworld film was actually a hit when it was originally released, and its pop-cultural influence stretches beyond its role as a blueprint for Jurassic Park. John Carpenter has said that the relentless, demonic Gunslinger inspired him to create Halloween’s Michael Myers, one of cinema’s most iconic horror figures. And the exploration of androids becoming self-aware, feeling exploited, and taking their vengeance was somewhat ahead of its time in 1973. From the sympathetic description of Evan Rachel Wood’s character (you read “robot” between those lines, right?), it seems as though the TV series will take advantage of its longer format to more carefully explore the subtleties of that dynamic. That will give Hopkins plenty of meaty God Complex substance to chew on. Will there even, Blade Runner-style, be room for a romance between Wood and one of the human visitors? Will Wood end up taking on the Brynner Gunslinger role herself? That would be a delight.

There’s plenty of sci-fi silliness in Westworld to make us cautious. In the original film, the Western theme park is one of three: there's Roman World and Medieval World, as well. HBO might be wise to scrap that part and focus instead on the intersection between creator, visitors, and unruly, deadly creations. After all, that’s why we keep going back to Jurassic Park, isn’t it?